Chapter 5

By the end of the year Reuben had saved enough money to buy five acres of Boarzell, in the low grounds down by Totease. He had saved chiefly on the wages of Blackman and Becky, though, against that, he had been forced to engage outside help for the hay in June, and also for the wheat in August. However, he had been lucky enough to secure tramp labour for this, which meant payment largely in barn-room and bread.

Then there had been a host of minor retrenchments, each in itself so small as to be almost useless, but mounting together into something profitable. Chocolate had vanished from the Odiam supper-table, their bread was made of seconds, the genuines being sold to Iden[Pg 37] Mill; they ate no meat on week-days except bacon, and eggs were forbidden in puddings. Reuben managed to get a small sale for his eggs and milk at the Manor and the curate's house, though he had not enough cows and poultry to make his dealing of much advantage.

Mrs. Backfield was the one to bear the brunt of these economies. She had been a trifle pampered during the latter days of her marriage, and set far more store than her sons on dainty food; also the work which she performed so well was a tax on her unaccustomedness. But she never grumbled, and this was not only because escape was near at hand. Strange to say, in these new days of his lordship, Reuben began to fill a place in her heart which he had never filled before. While her husband was alive, he had never really come inside her life, he had been an aloof, inarticulate being whom she did not understand. But now that he had asserted himself, she found herself turning towards him. She would have worked without prospect of release—indeed, as the days went by, Harry and his home and her promised idleness dwindled in her thoughts.

When Reuben told her he could now buy his first piece of Boarzell, she went through the day's work full of joy. Though, as far as the land itself was concerned, she would far rather have had new chintz covers for the parlour chairs.

They never sat in the parlour now.

Harry's pleasure was obviously insincere, just a mask put on out of kindness to his brother. Naomi was coming over on a few days' visit, and everything else was smoke. No one, Reuben reflected, as he walked over to Flightshot to see Sir Miles's agent, no one cared a rap about Boarzell. His mother thought more of her food and of her furniture, thought more of him and Harry, while Harry thought of nothing but Naomi. He would have to wage his fight alone.

The transaction was prompt and satisfactory. Reuben[Pg 38] did not haggle over the price, and was careful to let the agent know of his eagerness to buy more—otherwise, he was afraid that the Squire might either give the land back to the people, pushed by his Liberal politics, or else part with it for a song to some speculator. So he paid really a bit more than the land was worth, and made the agent a confidant of his dreams.

"It'll want a tedious lot of fighting, will that plot," he asserted, to counteract any idea his eagerness might give that Boarzell was a mine of hidden fertility—"Dunno as I shall m?ake anything out of it. But it's land I want—want to m?ake myself a sort of landed praprietor"—a lie—"and raise the old farm up a bit. I'd like to have the whole of Boarzell. Reckon as Grandturzel 'ud sell me their bit soon as I've got the rest. They'll never m?ake anything out of it."

He walked home over Boarzell, scarcely conscious of the ground he trod. He felt like a new-crowned king. As he looked round on the swart hummocks of the Moor, and its crest of firs, dim and bistred against the grey afternoon clouds, he found it hard to realise that it was not all his, that he still had almost the whole of it to fight for, acre by acre. He hurried towards his own little plot, bought, but as yet unconquered, still shagged with gorse and brittle with shards.

It was down in the hollow by Totease, as unpromising an estate as one could wish, all on a slope, gorse-grown at the top, then a layer of bracken, and at the Totease fence a kind of oozy pulp, where a lavant dribbled in and out of the grass; to Reuben, however, it was a land of milk and honey. He turned up the soil of it with his foot, and blessed the wealden clay.

"No flints here," he said; "reckon there's some stiff ground on the hill—but it's only the surface. Heather ?un't growing—that's a tedious good sign. I'll have oats here—the best in Peasmarsh."

He stood staring at the grass with its dribbles of[Pg 39] lavant and spines of rushes. The wind brought the sound of someone singing. At first he scarcely noticed, then gradually the song worked in with his daydream, and ended by rousing him out of it. He strolled across his domain, and marked half a dozen sturdy willows which must come out somehow roots and all. He climbed into the bracken zone, and from thence saw Harry sitting by a gorse thicket some hundred yards off with Naomi Gasson.

The wind puffed gently towards him, bringing him the song and the soft peach-smell of the gorse. Harry was a musician already of note among the farms; he had a beautiful voice, and there was very little he could not do with his fiddle, though of late this had been neglected for the claims of work and love. To-day he was singing an old song Reuben knew well—"The Song of Seth's House":
"'The blackbird flew out from the eaves of the Manor,
The Manor of Seth in the Sussex countrie,
And he carried a prayer from the lad of the Manor,
A prayer and a tear to his faithless ladie.
"'To the lady who lives in the Grange by the water,
The water of Iron in the Sussex countrie,
The lad of Seth's House prays for comfort and pity—
Have pity, my true love, have pity on me!
"'O why when we loved like the swallows in April,
Should beauty forget now their nests have grown cold?
O why when we kissed 'mid the ewes on the hanger,
Should you turn from me now that they winter in fold?
"'O why, because sickness hath wasted my body,
Should you do me to death with your dark treacherie?
O why, because brothers and friends all have left me,
Should you leave me too, O my faithless ladie?
"'One day when your pride shall have brought you to sorrow,
And years of despair and remorse been your fate,
Perhaps your cold heart will remember Seth's Manor,
And turn to your true love—and find it too late.'"

Harry's voice was very loud and clear, with that element of wildness which is a compensation for no[Pg 40] training. When he had finished "The Song of Seth's House" he started another, but broke off in the middle of it, and Reuben saw the two heads suddenly droop together, and fuse, the golden hair and the brown.

Naomi leaned against Harry, and his hand stole up and down her arm, stroking its whiteness. Reuben stood watching them, and for a moment he hungered. This was what he had cast away.

He turned from them sharply, and threw himself down on the dead bracken. Then suddenly the hunger passed. The reek of the moist earth rose up in his nostrils; it was the scent of his love, who was sweeter to him than ever Naomi was to Harry. His hand stole over the short, mould-smelling grass, caressing it. He had a love more beautiful than Harry's, whose comeliness would stay unwithered through the years, whose fruitfulness would make him great, whose allure was salted with a hundred dangers.... His fingers dug themselves into the earth, and he embraced Boarzell with wide-flung trembling arms. "My land!" he cried—"mine!—mine!"